February, 2007
February 1st, 2007, 12:03 a.m. - I'm having the worst time with titles
February 7th, 2007, 11:17 p.m. - How sad that recapping American Idol is the most interesting part of my life right now
"As Good (and Bad) as It Gets"
February 10th, 2007, 11:03 p.m. - The few, the proud, the neurosurgeons
5. Another Day in the Frontal Lobe (Katrina Firlik)
Up next: The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down (Anne Fadiman)
February 14th, 2007, 11:58 p.m. - I don't care if he's married! He can still be my Valentine!
February 18th, 2007, 6:33 p.m. - Apparently I'm in a neurology phase
6. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down (Anne Fadiman)
Up next: Lost and Found (Carolyn Parkhurst)
11:12 p.m. - Have I mentioned lately how much I love Danny and Oswald?
February 21st, 2007, 11:05 p.m. - Betsy got the bad ones, I got the good ones
February 25th, 2007, 10:40 p.m. - Just when I thought there was enough on TV, America's Next Top Model comes back
February 28th, 2007, 8:53 a.m. - Hee hee
"What Should Antonella Sing?" - I contributed to this little jab at Antonella Barba, Miss American Idol Scandal '07
10:51 p.m. - I crack myself up
I'm always interested in reading about people who have jobs I could never even imagine having or who have experienced things I will probably never experience. I randomly came across Firlik's book in a store and thought it sounded good - tales from the OR, basically, as told by a neurosurgeon. There are few neurosurgeons in the U.S., and even fewer female neurosurgeons, so Firlik offers a look inside a job that many people don't have. She writes very well for someone trained in medicine, and her best stuff comes from anecdotes about patients and her fellow doctors. Firlik is also quite humble, which seems to be rare for a surgeon, and doesn't tout herself as an amazing surgeon who has saved hundreds of lives. Instead, she just details what it's like to work with the human brain and what can happen when things go wrong. Also, maggots!
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down raises a lot of questions. It details the story of Lia Lee, the daughter of Laotian immigrants who suffered from severe epilepsy as a child and wound up unable to function because of severe brain damage. Thanks to communication difficulties between Lia's family and her doctors, her medications were never consistent and she was even taken from her parents for a few months because they weren't treating her according to the doctors' protocol. But it's difficult to determine who exactly is to blame for what happened to Lia. Her parents didn't know any better, and they thought they could heal her through their own traditional methods, so they didn't listen to the doctors. On the other hand, the doctors who should have treated her for sepsis didn't realize that they should have been. Fadiman tells the story from an unbiased perspective, interviewing pretty much everyone involved and trying to outline exactly what happened. Of course, that makes it harder to figure things out. Still, it's an interesting story and makes you wonder what was really going on in America's healthcare system back in the '80s.